There is a core-containing tablet as a kind of a tablet for use in a medicine and the like. This core-containing tablet includes a nucleated tablet and a covering portion in a periphery thereof. Generally, a nucleated tablet and a covering portion are composed of different kinds of medicines or pharmaceutical compositions each other, and a nucleated tablet is buried in a tablet center. When a nucleated tablet is not located at a center of a tablet, not only a loss or crack may occur in a covering portion, but also expression of an expected efficacy is disturbed, or an unexpected side reaction may occur. As described above, the positioning of the nucleated tablet may greatly affect a quality of a core-containing tablet. As a tablet manufacturing apparatus which manufactures this kind of core-containing tablet, there is for example a rotational core-containing tablet manufacturing machine as disclosed in PTD 1.
This rotational core-containing tablet manufacturing machine has a basic configuration to fill pharmaceutical powder into a plurality of die holes provided at predetermined intervals on a circumference along an outer edge portion of a rotating disk rotating at a high speed, supply a nucleated tablet onto pharmaceutical powder, further fill pharmaceutical powder onto the nucleated tablet, and thereafter compress and shape these pharmaceutical powders and nucleated tablet by means of a lower pestle and an upper pestle.
In the apparatus disclosed in PTD 1, a supplying apparatus which supplies a nucleated tablet is devised for the purpose of positioning a nucleated tablet at a tablet center. A plurality of plate springs (23) are radially or diagonally radially mounted on a transfer disk (14), and a nucleated tablet insertion pin (27) is attached to the free end thereof and located above a nucleated tablet holding portion (15) of transfer disk (14). A push-down roller (39) is provided which comes into contact with a head (29) of nucleated tablet insertion pin (27) and pushes down the same when nucleated tablet holding portion (15) of transfer disk (14) and die hole (4) of a rotating disk (5) overlap each other. The nucleated tablet is forced by nucleated tablet insertion pin (27) at a predetermined timing and then dropped and supplied. As illustrated above, an operation timing of nucleated tablet insertion pin (27) is set to be a timing of overlapping nucleated tablet holding portion (15) and die hole (4), so that the dropped nucleated tablet is dropped onto a center of pharmaceutical powder already filling die hole (4). It should be noted that the numbers in parenthesis are reference characters disclosed in the publication of the patent document.